


anything for a quiet life

by unprofessionalbard



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, The Adventure Zone: Amnesty, Trans Male Character, [bangs hands on the table] DUCK NEWTON TRANS, minor internalized transphobia, welcome 2 projection central
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-20
Updated: 2018-05-20
Packaged: 2019-05-09 07:26:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14711726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unprofessionalbard/pseuds/unprofessionalbard
Summary: ...leads to anything but a quiet life.Duck comes to terms with himself and notices some parallels.





	anything for a quiet life

The thing about living in a small town is that there’s not really any escaping your past. 

Places like Kepler are places people run _from_ , not _to_ — God knows Duck has seen so many of his peers pack up and never come back, and many more who are only here for holidays. Antsy people who outgrew the town that raised them. 

And of course Duck understands. The urge to scrap everything and start over blank has always, always been there for him, and always, always will be. It’s just that his problems can’t be escaped by getting into a car and driving across state borders. 

So he put down roots in the only place he’s ever known and made do with what he had. 

And that worked, for awhile. 

When Duck is fourteen, he cuts his hair and dyes it black. It’s equal parts teenage rebellion and grappling with his own displacement, searching to find some small comfort in his body. By the time he’s sixteen, he’s stopped dyeing it, but keeps it short. He likes it better than way, has a stock list of reasons why when someone asks, but none of them are exactly right for a reason he can't quite place.

That’s the year he starts going by _Duck_ — he’s gone by his last name for most of high school anyway; his first name is too common, and he wasn’t the only one in Kepler given it. It’s a slow and tedious but not painful process to get people to call him what he likes, although when asked why he doesn’t like his own name, he doesn’t have the vocabulary to explain why. 

( When Minerva first appears, she calls him “Duck” without being told. It is the only thing about her visits that he’s grateful for. )

It makes him want to scream, this whole chosen one business. It’s like there’s not a single aspect of his life he can control, that he can be _normal_ in. He wants to look in a mirror and see someone average, wants his features to stop sticking out, wants nothing to do with any kind of attention on him. Duck doesn’t believe in destiny. 

He tries to pretend he’s dreaming Minerva up the same way he pretends being called ‘Miss Newton’ doesn’t make his stomach curl on itself, the same way he can't look at reflective surfaces for too long. 

Minerva asks him what scares him so much and he knows she’s not asking about the latter, but it wouldn’t matter since he doesn’t have an answer in either case. Eventually, she stops visiting. The feeling that he’s a person once removed doesn’t, but by now Duck is very good at pretending nothing’s wrong. 

He’s twenty five and a tourist calls him ‘sir’ and it’s the second shoe drop he didn’t know he was waiting for. He speaks and the tourist corrects themselves to say “ma’am” and something ignites itself in Duck long enough for him to say, “No, you got it right the first time, but you can just call me Duck.”

Kepler is… disconnected. Crawling through time in a way that allows its residents to just _not know_ about a lot of things. Allows Duck, particularly, to have gone twenty five years without understanding himself. 

It takes him another few months to tell anyone he’ll have to see more than once in his life. Learning what being transgender means, looking into the research himself, it’s a lot different from telling someone. And while he’s sure it wouldn’t matter, that Kepler would take it in stride and bounce back the way it always does, it still feels like a step Duck has to _commit_ to. 

A step towards the normalcy he wants, but only if he walks away from it first. 

Those few months are the first and only time he thinks about leaving Kepler. Where the craving for a fresh start is nearly unbearable, where it feels like the choice is to leave or to repress this because telling someone is so much that it seems his ribcage is closing in on his lungs. 

Something tells him he can’t ignore this forever. Acknowledging it opened the floodgates and he knows more than he knows anything else he’ll never be happy trying to pretend he’s a woman. In the end, he just corrects someone on his pronouns. Word travels fast, and by the time Duck goes into the doctor’s office to ask about hormone treatment, she already knows. 

Kepler, like it does with so many things, allows Duck to be here without being particularly negative or positive about him. It’s comforting, in an odd way. Helps him slip back under the radar, to just be another guy in Kepler, helps him be _Duck_ in a way he couldn’t before. 

That comfort comes hand in hand with isolation, but that’s fine. Duck’s a private guy, wants a quiet life, and he can live with a couple moments of odd disconnect, the feeling that while everyone is civil and pleasant, none of them really understand. He can live with not telling anyone new, because he’s not ashamed, it’s just no one’s business but his.

It’s fine. He can live with it. If he keeps his head down and goes about his daily life, it’s fine. And besides, he’s not _un_ happy, and this is so, so much better than before, so what is there to complain about?

( Sometimes it feels like the quiet, _normal_ life that Duck wants is water in his hands, always getting away from him. That his hold on it is flimsy at best, that if he slips once it’ll get away from him. )

In the end, he’s not surprised when Minerva comes back, when he has to get Beacon, when he joins the Pine Guard. He’s not ready, but he’s not surprised. It’s not the only part of him that he’s tried to run from and failed, that he didn’t understand. The similarity unsettles him, because he doesn’t _want_ to be the chosen one or whatever. 

Then again, it’s not like he asked to be transgender either. 

_But you wanted to transition,_ he thinks, _you didn’t want a talking sword or monsters in your forest or to have responsibility for the world thrust onto your shoulders like you’re supposed to be Atlas._

During one of Minerva’s visits, he acts on an impulse.

“Minerva,” he starts, “Do you think… do you think it would be fair to compare this whole, uh, fate thing to—” his voice fails him for a second as he realizes he’s never told her out loud, but she must know, why does he still find it hard to get the words out, he’s a grown man, he should be able— “to, uh, to my transition?”

Minerva’s smile carries through her voice when she talks; she always sounds a little too proud, like she knows she’s right, but this time there’s a gentle note in her voice that gives him pause. “You tell me, Duck Newton,” she says simply. And then she’s gone, and Duck is standing by himself. 

He stands there for a long, long moment, and then sighs. 

Might be time to take up CrossFit again.

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on tumblr @tieflinggay!


End file.
